A Glasgow Trilogy Read online

  ‘Just my bloody luck!’ he moaned. ‘Just that bit too late. The bastard that wired me must ha’ been on his way out with the lot. So help ma Bob!’

  He flashed a beam of daylight brightness on Savage, up and down him and round him, and bent over him a little. He thought he heard breathing but he couldn’t wait to make sure. He didn’t want to get involved. To hang around murder or manslaughter or whatever it was would put him out of the way of the money for ever. He left Savage lying and scrambled up the chute, practically on all fours, back to his kennel in a motel near Bridgeton Cross.

  The sun rose again in a clear sky, promising another hot day, and Percy rose with it, not refreshed but not fatigued. He washed and shaved slowly, wallowing in the luxury of his first morning in a hotel. He was all set for his flight to London and from there to Land’s End. His scalp tingled, as often before, with a thrilling sensation that fate had marked him out for something special. He was no commonplace non-entity from a back-street. He had a destiny, and he had the talisman of his briefcase. He wasn’t sure how many thousands were in it, for the fight with Savage had confused his memory, but he was sure he had enough to arm him for a long time against an unfriendly world. He thought he could live for years on what he was carrying, and he couldn’t think past that.

  He had his breakfast in a corner of a heavily quiet dining-room, a gaunt clergyman and his chubby wife in another corner, two debonair commercial travellers in a third, and an elderly couple who looked like Punch and Judy living in retirement slobbered softly in the fourth corner. The centre was a desert of white tablecloths and glittering cutlery. Grapefruit or porridge, toast, and bacon and eggs. Percy chose the grapefruit because he had never liked porridge and then he had difficulty scooping out a spoonful. He let it go half-eaten, but made up for it on the toast and bacon and eggs.

  The night-manager was still on duty and when Percy passed the desk on his way out to Charing Cross and a bus to the Central Station he sent a weary glance from under his heavy-lidded eyes, and a little smile flickered under his pencil-line moustache.

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ he said gently. ‘Pleasant journey to Aberdeen.’

  Percy splayed manfully on.

  ‘Morning,’ he muttered audibly, and inaudibly he said, ‘Sarcastic little nyaff. You’d think he didn’t believe I was going to Aberdeen.’

  It was just turned nine o’clock on a bright summer morning in the middle of June.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  So bright was the morning that elderly men went to work without a hat and without a waistcoat, young girls bloomed at the bus-stops in sleeveless frocks and bare legs, glad to leave off their stockings because it meant they didn’t need to wear a girdle, schoolboys who had sat their term examinations played truant along the banks of the Canal as far north as Bishopbriggs and Cawder, and the city reeled in a heat haze filled with the choking smell of dust and tar. The cruel sun put a limelight on the decaying front of slum properties where housewives eighty feet above the gutters sweated in a love-longing for the country and listened to the pigeons moaning, all in the blue unclouded weather.

  Before nine o’clock Mr Daunders had two phone calls. The first was from Miss Nairn’s mother to say Miss Nairn wouldn’t be in because she had flu.

  ‘Flu in the month of June!’ Mr Daunders muttered callously when he put the phone back in its cradle. ‘Flu in weather like this! What will they think up next?’

  He sat chafing at his little desk and tried to work out a way of dispersing Miss Nairn’s class amongst the other teachers without coming into collision with the noncooperative element. He had nearly finished allotting the last half-dozen of Miss Nairn’s forty-eight pupils when he had his second phone call. Mr Whiffen said he wouldn’t be in till some time after ten or eleven because his widowed mother had taken a bad turn during the night and he had to wait in for the doctor to call. There was no one else.

  Mr Daunders sneered at the phone sceptically when he cradled it again, and sat at his desk to work out what to do about Mr Whiffen’s forty-five pupils.

  ‘He probably means he won’t be in all morning, if I know him,’ he snorted. ‘Now what’s the best thing to do? I don’t want to disperse another class. I’ve nowhere to put them even if I did. What I could do is shift an infant- teacher into Whiffen’s class for the morning, and put six girls from the top class into the infants. It would serve. They could keep them quiet or play games with them. Oh, if I could just find peace and quiet to sit in the sun and read my Horace! Aye, the far Coolins are calling me away!’

  He went out to the playground at nine o’clock to see the school in and strolled back in the sunshine to his room. Maybe he could get peace for an hour or two now. But when he entered the corridor where his room was he saw a man and a woman waiting at his door. He hadn’t his glasses on and he peered. He sensed trouble. He relaxed a little when he recognized Frank Garson and his father. They wouldn’t be bringing trouble. They were nice people.

  ‘Beautiful morning,’ he said pleasantly, raising his grey felt hat to the lady. ‘Can I help you, Mr Garson?’

  ‘This is my wife,’ said Mr Garson. ‘She thought we ought to come and see you. I kept the boy back, to come with us, I hope you don’t mind, but you see it’s him that’s the reason for us wanting to see you. It’s him that knows what my wife thinks you ought to be told. He’s got a story about the cellar.’

  ‘The cellar?’ said Mr Daunders. ‘Come in. Come in, Mrs Garson. You mean the school cellar?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ said Mr Garson unhappily, and threw an appeal at his wife to take over. She knew he hated talking. That was her line, and this was her idea. His wife raised her head high with pride, taking her cue, knowing this was her hour, and started talking calmly, fluently, clearly, with a don’t-you-dare-interrupt-me firmness.

  Mr Daunders hunched at his desk and played with his paper-knife as she talked. Apart from the fact that he prided himself on always letting other people have their say and believed he had a cool, analytical brain that could extract the essence from any amount of blethering, he was in no state to interrupt. As soon as she mentioned money hidden in the cellar his head was a battlefield of different pains struggling for supremacy; a dogged steady ache holding its ground like fire-baptised infantry grimly obstructed the sudden sallies that thrust deep into his skull like a combined air and tank force blitzing the infantry.

  ‘I knew it, I knew it, I knew it,’ he muttered, not interrupting her, merely making a light marginal note to her narrative as she described the share-out. He ploughed his grey hair with clean-nailed fingers and turned to the boy when the mother finished.

  ‘Just how much would you say was there?’ he asked sadly.

  Frank Garson knew he had to go through with it now it was started, but he wasn’t enjoying being an informer. He looked at his headmaster dully and said nothing.

  ‘A hundred?’ Mr Daunders bid.

  The boy shook a heavy head.

  ‘A thousand?’ Mr Daunders raised his bid.

  The boy looked at him as if he was daft.

  ‘Ten, twenty or thirty, I don’t know,’ he gave a grudging answer.

  ‘Thousand?’ Mr Daunders’ eyebrows went up. ‘You mean thousands, you don’t mean just ten or twenty pounds?’

  ‘Thousands,’ the boy insisted softly.

  Mr Daunders sagged over his paper-knife.

  ‘Now, think, my boy, think!’ he admonished him magisterially. ‘Maybe there’s not much between ten and twenty pounds, but there’s a big difference between ten thousand and twenty thousand. As for thirty thousand, now just think! Thirty thousand is twenty thousand more than ten thousand.’

  The boy didn’t dispute it.

  ‘You surely know better than that how much you saw,’ Mr Daunders said plaintively.

  ‘It was an awful lot,’ the boy said helpfully.

  ‘We’d better go down and see this cellar,’ said Mr Daunders bravely rising.

  He sent for the janitor to bring
the key, and they all went down through the basement, Mr and Mrs Garson, Frank and the headmaster, and Mr Green the janitor leading them with the key in his hand like a mace-bearer leading a royal procession. Once the door was opened Mr Green switched on the ceiling lights and ushered them all in. He was glad he had the foresight to put a team of cleaners on to tidying the place. His conscience was clear. He didn’t mind who inspected the cellar.

  ‘It’s a bit dusty,’ he said pleasantly, ‘but I try to keep it in some kind of order. It was just a dump before I came here. What was it you were wanting to see, Mr Daunders?’

  The headmaster wasn’t disposed to tell the janitor more in the meantime than he had to.

  ‘It’s only something this boy thinks he saw down here,’ he said remotely. ‘Just wait by the door, Mr Green, please, if you don’t mind.’

  But before Frank Garson had time to cross the cellar and point out the tea-chests they all saw Savage lying on the floor. Mr Daunders cried, ‘Oh, my God!’ Mrs Garson screamed, Mr Garson frowned, the janitor came forward from the door, eager for sensation, and Frank Garson fainted.

  The mother attended to her boy and the janitor attended to Savage. Like all janitors he was a bit of a plumber, electrician, carpenter, glazier, accountant, wages-clerk, and first-aid expert.

  ‘He’s all right,’ he said on his knees. ‘He’s breathing. He’s knocked out or fainted or something.’

  Mr Daunders hopped bird-like round the kneeling janitor and the prostrate boy.

  ‘Phone for an ambulance,’ he cried anxiously, ‘phone for the police, get his mother, take him up to my room, get a doctor, quick!’

  ‘Well, give us a hand then,’ said Mr Green, slightly aggrieved at the number of orders.

  Mr Garson thawed far enough to help him to carry the boy upstairs. Frank Garson came to and followed them with his mother’s right arm round his shoulders, and Mr Daunders guarded the rear from further alarms.

  ‘Just remembered,’ panted the janitor as he laboured up the steep staircase from the cellar to the basement while Mr Garson grunted with Savage’s feet against his midriff. ‘This is the school doctor’s morning, the monthly medical, you know. Maybe he’s in by this time.’

  All Mr Daunders’ orders were obeyed, not all at once, but in due order. They laid Savage reverently on the floor in Mr Daunders’ room, they fetched the school visiting doctor from the medical room, they phoned for an ambulance, and they sent the school milk attendant to fetch in Mrs Savage. The call to the police Mr Daunders put off for a while till he had time to take his bearings.

  The doctor said it was only a case of concussion. Mrs Savage said the boy hadn’t been home all night but she hadn’t worried, because it wasn’t the first time he had run away and he always came back, and the ambulance took him to the Royal Infirmary.

  ‘Now,’ sighed Mr Daunders, hunched at his desk again. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Look, Mr Daunders,’ said the janitor shrewdly. ‘That boy was in a fight. Cause I saw his belt lying beside him when we picked him up. You know that belt you told him not to wear, that Army belt with all the brass studs in it, it was lying near him. I bet you he took it off to swipe somebody and got the worst of it. But I don’t know how he got into the cellar, there’s only me got a key to it.’

  He was in on this and he wasn’t going to be kept out. No standing by at the door for him, he was on the inside now. After all, it was his cellar. You couldn’t have boys lying unconscious in his cellar, and then try and tell him to wait outside please. No, thank you.

  ‘There’s something queer going on,’ he said. ‘You mark my words.’

  ‘Let’s go back down,’ said Mr Daunders patiently. It couldn’t be kept from the janitor. There was no point trying. ‘Are you all right now, Frank?’

  The boy nodded, standing in front of his mother with her hands on his shoulder, nestling into her like a frightened sparrow.

  ‘Yes, he’s all right now,’ said his mother. ‘That would have given anybody a shock, so it would. He might have been dead for all we knew. But we want to get this story cleared up one way or the other.’

  They all went back to the cellar, with Frank as the fingerman. One chest was empty, the next had three hundred and fifty pounds, and the third had two hundred and seventy. The janitor was astounded, Frank was humiliated, and his parents and Mr Daunders looked at him with respect. To them, his story was proved. He had merely mistaken hundreds for thousands, a thing any schoolboy might do at the sight of a lot of money.

  ‘Good God, what an amount of money!’ cried Mr Green, and rubbed his chin with itching fingers.

  ‘Somebody’s been at it,’ Frank Garson whispered. ‘Somebody’s shifted it.’

  ‘Was there more?’ Mr Daunders asked softly.

  ‘A wheen mair, I mean a lot more,’ the boy told him, almost angrily. ‘And there was money in the chest that’s empty. I know. I tried to count it once. And I saw it at the last Friday Night Service.’

  ‘The last what?’ Mr Daunders frowned.

  ‘This boy Phinn was starting a new religion,’ Mrs Garson explained. ‘That’s a part of the story I didn’t make clear when I was talking to you.’

  ‘Yes, of course, this fellow Percy Phinn was the ring- leader, wasn’t he?’ Mr Daunders remembered. His head was giving him hell. ‘I’d better send across the street for his mother. I know her. And I’ll have to phone the police. I’m sorry, Mrs Garson, but I’ll have to.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ she answered proudly. ‘My boy’s hands are clean.’

  ‘Leave those chests just as they are, Mr Green,’ the headmaster addressed the janitor formally. ‘Lock the door after us and give me the key. I want things left just as they are for the police.’

  He sent the Garsons home. The parents said they were afraid of reprisals if their boy stayed on at the school. He told them to get a medical certificate for him.

  ‘Nerves, general debility, anything you like,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter. There are only two weeks left till the end of term. And he’s sat all his examinations. It doesn’t matter. He would be safer away till all this is sorted out. You’re quite right.’

  ‘We’re moving anyway,’ Mr Garson chipped in so unexpectedly that Mr Daunders turned to him as to a dumb stranger who had suddenly acquired the gift of speech. ‘I’m getting a job outside the city, and I’m going to put the boy to another school after the holidays.’

  ‘An excellent idea,’ said Mr Daunders. He was too concerned about the police calling at his school to care very much where Frank Garson went next session.

  ‘There must have been nearly a thousand quid there,’ said Mr Green chattily when the Garsons were gone and Mr Daunders stood at the phone dialling the police.

  ‘Would you mind running across the street and asking Mrs Phinn to come over and see me for a moment?’ he said, freezing him.

  Mrs Phinn came over in her slippers and an old black dress that was torn under one arm-pit. She knew nothing of any money. She was only a poor despised widow, forced by poverty to work as a cleaner in the school where her man had once been the janitor, and a far better janitor than Mr Green would ever be, a janitor headmasters could turn to for advice. All she knew was Percy hadn’t been home all night, and he was a good son and he had never stayed away all night before. Where was Mr Daunders hiding him? What was he trying to do to her?

  ‘You know more about him than I do,’ she said aggressively. ‘Bringing me over here to ask me a lot of questions. And you know the answers, I can tell it the way you ask me. What are you trying to make me say?’

  She didn’t do Mr Daunders’ headache any good, and he was glad to get rid of her without telling her very much.

  ‘We thought you might be able to help us, that’s all. It’s nothing much, not really. No more than I’ve tried to tell you, if you’d only listen. There’s been some money hidden in the cellar and some boys said Percy knew something about it. We’re not accusing anybody, we just wanted to have a word with your son
.’

  Mrs Phinn was as keen to get away as Mr Daunders was to let her go. She didn’t want to listen to any talk of money in the cellar. The moment he mentioned it she remembered the stranger in the raincoat. She was sure it meant real trouble now, and all she wanted to do was bury her head in the sand of her own corner till it was all over.

  ‘I always knew that big stupid lump would get into trouble one day,’ she muttered, banging the door behind when she got home. ‘Him and his books, as thick as his head. Ideas above his station, that’s his trouble. And where the hell has he got to? Well, he won’t break my heart, I’ll make sure of that. And me sticking up for him, telling folk he’s a good son. He’s been a dead loss since the day I weaned him!’

  Mr Daunders relaxed for a moment or two in the blessed silence of his room when Mrs Phinn had gone.

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to phone the Office too,’ he thought, sighing in misery. He had always made it his policy never to bother the Director of Education. ‘See what they think. They may want a formal report. I don’t know what the procedure is in a case like this. But that cellar is Corporation property, so I suppose the Office has a legal interest in the money. Found on their property. I wonder whose it is? But I can’t see that I’m responsible in any way. Oh dear, what a mess! By God, I’ll enjoy this summer holiday. A fine quiet month in Skye, far away from it all!’

  While he was waiting for the police to arrive he sent for Noddy, Specky, Skinny, Wedderburn, Cuddie and Cutchy – all the boys mentioned in Mrs Garson’s account of what her son had told her, and all the boys he had found with too much money at one time or another. He saw them one by one, keeping them incommunicado till his interviews were complete. He questioned them cleverly, he wheedled and coaxed, he shouted and whispered, he threatened and promised, adjusting his technique to the temperament of the boy. He learned nothing. Maybe they weren’t very bright at the general analysis of a complex sentence or the decimalization of money, but they knew when the wind was in the east. They had their own grapevine. They didn’t know Savage had been found knocked out in the cellar, but they all knew Savage was absent. They had all seen Garson waiting with his father and mother at the headmaster’s door. They didn’t know why. But they all knew Garson hadn’t gone to his class after that. They saw their cue and they took it. There is nobody shrewder than a backward schoolboy. It may be an awkward fact, but it is still a fact, that when a boy has a battle of wits with his headmaster, even if that headmaster is an Honours graduate in Latin and Greek with a pass in the classes of Logic and Metaphysics and Mental Philosophy, the boy wins every time. He isn’t tempted to parry and equivocate, he doesn’t feel any desire to show off and come back with a clever answer. He is a brick wall, and you can’t see through a brick wall by logic alone. You need a window.